Former President Donald Trump said the historic conviction had been especially brutal for his family, especially his wife, Melania, and their 18-year-old son, Barron.
“I think in a lot of ways it’s harder on them than it is on me,” Trump, 77, said. He spoke to Fox & Friends on Sunday. He spoke in his first television interview since being convicted of taking hush money and falsifying business records to cover up his alleged affair with porn star Stormy Daniels.
“They’re all good people, all of them,” he said of his family.
The presumed Republican front-runner suggested the “salacious” nature of the trial and the gag order preventing him from responding fully was a plot by “bad people” to “create chaos.”
“I have a wonderful wife, and she hears this all the time,” he said of the allegations against Melania and him.
“She’s fine but I think it’s very hard for her… she has to read all this cp,” he said.
Asked about the attention being paid to his teenage son, who recently graduated, Trump proudly said Barron was “amazing.”
“He’s tall, he’s handsome, he’s a very good student,” he said. “He’s applied to colleges and got in everywhere he went, so from that standpoint he’s very popular. He’s a very smart guy.”
“He’s really tall and a great kid. He’s cool. Really cool,” he added.
The former president has denounced the “rigged” trial despite being under a gag order ahead of his 11 July verdict, which could see him face up to four years in prison.
Trump vowed to appeal, calling the legal fight “honorable” and saying “we’re fighting for the Constitution.”
The charges relate to $130,000 in “hush money” paid by Trump’s former “fixer” lawyer Michael Cohen to porn actress Stormy Daniels to keep quiet about a one-night stand she had with Trump.
